Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1142: National vs. Local Politics, Trump, Healthy Civic Engagement, and why "Woke" Is an Unhelpful Term: Chris Butler

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Chris Butler is a pastor and "serial organizer" hailing from the Southside of Chicago where he lives with his wife, Aziza, and 6 children. Pastor Chris leads Chicago Embassy Church Network, a mission-based network church in America's third largest city and is an experienced organization builder. Butler is also co-author of Compassion and Conviction, and co-host of the awesome "Church Politics" podcast with Justin Giboney. The Bible Recap: https://thebiblerecap.myshopify.com/products/the-bible-recap?utm_source=TITR-PODCAST&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=q1TBR_TITR&utm_id=TITR-Q124 Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Chris Butler, who is a pastor and serial organizer. He lives with his wife and six children in South Chicago, and he also leads the Chicago Embassy Church Network, which is a mission-based network of churches in the city of Chicago. He's also co-author, along with Justin Gibney and Michael Weir, of the book Compassion and Conviction, The Anne Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement. And last but not least, he is the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, The Church Politics Podcast with his friend, Justin Gibney. It's a fantastic podcast. I just love how both Chris and Justin keep such a gospel-centered focus as they discuss all kinds of things in the political world, and they do so with a lot of wisdom and wit and kindness, and it's just a

super helpful podcast. So I'm excited to talk to Chris. This was a fascinating conversation. And without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only pastor, Chris Butler. Chris Butler, I almost called you congressman, but I know you've... Didn't work out. Almost, near congressman. Are you thinking about running again? Is that something that was in your past or is that a possibility for your future? Or are you allowed to say? You know, I suppose you're never allowed to say never, but it's not something that is on the front burner at all.

Okay. Okay. Focusing on your ministry and also what's your involvement with the AND Campaign, I know you and Justin do the podcast together, which, by the way, is one of my favorite podcasts. You guys, yeah, I love it. It's so helpful. Is that the extent of your involvement? Are you kind of with them on a part-time basis? So I'm on the executive committee, I believe is what we call it, at the AND Campaign. So just helping to think about the strategy and execute some of the strategy at the AIM campaign. And obviously, I get the joy of doing the podcast with Justin, which is, you know, it's a joy. It's

great to hear you say that it's helpful, because that's certainly why we started it. And that's the main thing that we hope comes out of it, if that is helpful to somebody somewhere. Well, let me just be more specific. I think you guys see eye to eye on a lot of things, but I love it that sometimes you'll offer different angles as well. And both of you are so kingdom focused. And that comes through in whatever political thing you guys are discussing. You always bring it back to the gospel, both in the content in which you're advocating for it and whatever issue, but also your posture, it shines really brightly. And you're just so thoughtful.

I'm both, you guys are so well-versed in it and stuff. So all those ingredients are really hard to find these days and in political discourse. So, which is why you guys are like my go-to source. So, yeah, well, that's, that's just an,'s just an honor, an incredible honor to hear you say it. And I'm honored to be here with you. This is another piece of content that I think is helpful that goes out into the world. So thank you also for what you do. Well, thank you.

Thank you. And yeah, I'm excited for your involvement with Exiles in Babylon this year. It's going to be, I almost said heated, not in a bad way. It's going to be an energetic, uh, and challenging conference. So I'm, I'm super excited about it, but, um, uh, so let's, let's, uh, find out a little bit more about who you are. How did you, I mean, you have these kinds of dual lanes you run in. You're a pastor. You've been in ministry for several years. Um, you're also involved, uh're also involved politically. How did you get involved in both ministry and politics? So I got involved in church, I would say, and politics kind of at the same time. Like I

say that I grew up on the front row of the church and on the front lines of kind of social justice work in Chicago. Because my parents were very church involved. You know, my mom teaching Sunday school and directing the children's choir, my dad drove the church van. And, you know, we were always in church. And by the time I was in sixth grade, I actually slipped into civics and politics because of an issue with my grammar school principal. They were going to fire her through a local school council process, which we have in Chicago, local school councils that are essentially many school boards at every school. And they had at that time the power to hire fire principals. I was in sixth grade. I liked the principal. I didn't know much about the conversations they were having about budgets and all that stuff, but I knew I liked the principal.

And so we started interrupting local school council meetings to make sure they couldn't do the work of firing the principal. And it turns out a local community organization got involved with that same fight, probably on slightly more well thought out grounds, but they got involved with saving that same principal. And I got involved with the local community organization. And from there, I was just in civics and politics and community issues, uh, from the time I was 12 years old. Wow.

That's crazy. Um, and then, so when did you become, did you, uh, when did you become a pastor then? Like,

would you wait like at an early age, were you involved in kind of full-time ministry? No. So I also slipped into pastor. Uh, so I was, I was working in, in, uh, I was working in politics and civics. My brother and I in 2013 started a public affairs consulting firm, which was a great next step. I had done a lot of I had done electoral campaigns. I had worked in Springfield, the state capital in Illinois, been in some issue organizations.

And so opening this firm was a great next step for us. And that's what I was doing. But I was still very much involved with the church. lay leader, I would say even I did some academic study for, I would say for Bible teaching, because I wasn't thinking about vocational ministry. But I did, you know, at my church, I would preach from time to time, you know, once or twice a year, taught Sunday school and that type of thing. And so, you know, wanted to invest in that. So I had done that type of thing. But in 2016, the pastor of my church that I grew up in and the church that I pastor today actually became ill with cancer and had to take time off. This was a time where the church was already experiencing some difficulty. And so I had actually gone away just to pray for the church. And I really felt like some ideas were dropped in my spirit about what we might be able to do at the church.

And so I did what any good consultant would do. I made a PowerPoint presentation and I went to see my pastor. And when I walked him through the whole PowerPoint presentation, it was in that meeting that he told me, you know, I got this diagnosis. I've got to take time off. We're going to need an interim person. And I was in here. He actually said he had been praying about who he should recommend to the church as an interim. And he said, you know, you need to do this because obviously God has given you a vision for the church. And so I started as the interim and over about a year of treatment, my pastor was fine. And when we came to the conversation after he was done with treatment and had beaten the cancer, his view was, I think he was like 65 or 66.

And he's like, I'm at this age. Honestly, I've been battling cancer and still my blood pressure has been lower than when I was leading the church. So why don't we go and talk to the church about you stand on full time? And we did that and that's how it ended up in the pastorate. How many years has it been now? So it is, what, seven years. It's only 23, that was 2016, so seven years.

How would you describe your, if I can word it, yeah, how would you describe your like political position or view viewpoints um i i know i mean because you're a uh a christian pro-life democrat that's a good starting place right although you told me offline that you said if you're looking for a poster child for the democratic party you you are not it and both you and justin yeah so i i think um that especially these days i i think i've been this way most of my life but especially these days you got to think about your politics it's much more healthy i would say to think about your politics uh in terms of issues and communities and not uh parties and ideologies because they have become so fixed. And, you know, I grew up in Chicago, actually got bitten by that political bug in 2012. I mean, when I was 12, I wish I was 12 in 2012.

But when I was 12 years old and by the time I was going into high school, it was the time of George W. Bush's first campaign for president, which you'll recall was this compassionate conservatism. And that was very attractive to me. And I really wanted to become a Republican. But I was a black boy on the west side of Chicago and I couldn't find the Republican party. Uh, so I ended up, um, working in a space that, you know, we kind of call it independent democratic politics in Chicago. Uh, so it's a little bit less machine aligned, um, a little bit more, uh, free willing. And, uh, back then there were more free-willing. And back then, there were more pro-life Democrats in Chicago and across the Midwest who sort of fell into that independent democratic space. But you have really machine-mainline politicians at that time that could be pro-life.

But the reason today I say I'm not opposed to child for the West is because, you know, everything is so hard and fast. And if you diverge on any one point, then you can't find a place for yourself in a political party, which is really a different conception of political parties than what we really had in the United States. I mean, certainly parties have viewpoints and sort of ideological leanings. And I certainly think that I'm more in favor of government being able to get involved in places where it counts and where a lot of people can be helped. That would, in an old world, lend me solidly in the Democratic Party. But some of the issues that I think are really deeply grounded in scripture that used to be more acceptable

in the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, they are not. And so while I ran for Congress as a Democrat, but if you talk to a lot of Democratic Party apparatchiks, they probably would not want a person of my sort of interesting issue mix, uh, you know, representing the democratic party. Why do you think it's gotten so, I forget the word you use, but where it's like that to be a Democrat,

you have to sign off on all these things and Republican, all these things where you said 20 years ago, 30 years ago, or long, you know, up until recently, it wasn't like that. What has made it like that? where you said 20 years ago, 30 years ago, up until recently, it wasn't like that. What has made it like that, would you say? I mean, does Trump have something to do with it? Is it the social media polarization? I mean,

algorithms and I don't know. Yeah. I think, and now you're going to get me in more trouble, but a lot of people would like to argue that Trump is a cause. I think that Trump is an outcome of a badly polarized, a very hyper-polarized political environment. And so in this environment, the main thought is who can beat the other side who can you know give them hell and it's not even a sort of proactive policy worldview kind of a thing that's driving a lot of our politics if if i really knew how we got here, Preston, I probably would be making a lot more money, doing a whole different set of things. You'd be a Pulitzer prize winning sociologist. Exactly.

But, but I do think that, you know, the kind of social media world where we now know that these algorithms have learned that they can keep our eyeballs longer by feeding us things that make us hateful and angry than by any other thing like even like certainly not thoughtfulness and reflection uh and and even joy and peace don't keep us there in front of the screen. And so we get a lot of the things that make us hate people and things. And so we, and so when the,

when that happens and we start to break down that general feeling of safety, then it's our, I think it's kind of our nature to retreat to corners. And when it's not about an engagement, like I always talk about, like civic engagement and political engagement, but when it's really not about an engagement, when it's about retreating to corners, that's when those litmus tests and you got to check all the boxes

really begin to take hold um and and party machiner can we i want to play around with that idea you suggested for a second because i i felt the same way but you're way more well-versed in this arena than i am and so by and by the way if i say anything that's just really stupid or off base you have free reign to please please correct me or suggest something otherwise. So I like to think freely in these conversations and sometimes that gets me into trouble. So this whole idea of Trump being a result, not a catalyst, I've thought that for a while. I don't know why I've thought that, but he seems to be, yeah, a response more than a cause.

I couldn't prove that, justify it, but it's interesting to hear you say that. Why do you think that is? How would you prove that point or maybe offer evidence for that? I think if you back up a presidency or two, you start to see some of this take place, right? Where now I was a person who was like, you know, really against the Iraq war. And I think there were many justified reasons to be in that camp. But even in that movement, you started to see what I felt like was a little bit too much of a personification of the error of that foreign policy in George W. Bush. So this guy is the devil. And, you know, and also in that period, right, the Internet and the social media world is growing in the background.

Right. The Obama presidency. And, you know, I was an Obama guy. I worked on the Obama Senate campaign here in Illinois and knew a number of folks who were involved in the presidential. But it that presidential campaign really didn't focus all that much on policy. It was hope and change and possibility and the future, but in a little bit of a way where all of that was personified in a way, where it's this person who can heal the planet and solve the problems in the world. It wasn't as much a party or an idea. I think prior to that, so much of the time, the politics, especially at the presidential level, the person was an embodiment of an ideal, a party and a set of ideas and approach to government and not a personification.

Right. But I think, you know, and you probably back up, you know, another presidency, you know, even to the Clinton presidency and start to see this kind of personality presidency taking hold. And so that's one of the dynamics. And then inside of the rough and tumble of the Obama presidency, there you did get a lot of very tough partisan battles where that was the first place where those battles start to play out. Then, you know, the Clinton campaign comes in, the campaign that Donald Trump wins. I think that, one, Donald Trump is able to win the primary just because, I think presidential politics, you see this, you know, the next president is a response to the last person. Um, and so, you know, in, in, in some ways Trump was just a kind of anti-Obama,

uh, everything that he was, Trump was not, but in the midst of that, you get this very difficult campaign. Um, it's a very difficult presidency, you know, healthcare, all these things, close votes, you know, introduce also the world, this kind of like micro-targeted political campaign. So we're sending these very targeted messages to different communities because we know exactly what people are thinking and where they're going. And I mean, hyper targeting at a way that technology was allowing that we just weren't able to do before. And so you start to sort of atomize the whole political scene. And those are the messages that are coming out of the political campaigns. You know, the social media is growing. Those algorithms are learning that, you know,

you got to make people mad. Politics has given a lot more fodder for making people mad than, you know, by the time we get to the 2016 campaign, now we have fresh in our minds, the 2020 campaign and, and the whole idea of, you know, election denialism and that type of thing. But 2016 was actually very difficult for a lot of people on the Democratic side. And there were there was plenty of feeling that this this election, you know, what about the popular vote? Were all the votes counted? Is this is this president legitimate? And so, you know, there are a lot of things that happen in our politics that are not, you know, who won the presidential election. And I think that when

we just look at our politics in terms of the presidential election, we miss so much because most of that, I think, is usually an outcome of things that are happening in the society more so than you know then they're producing what's happening in the society i mean it's often been said i think this is what you're saying that politics is downstream from culture is that yeah is that debated i mean i mean i've heard i mean it just seems so clear to me and most people say that do people say no culture is downstream from politics i mean to me it just seems clear it's the other way around but i don't think most people debate it i think a lot of people who work in politics forget it yeah and begin to feel like they're producing culture or that they at least that they have the opportunity to produce culture

and politics teaches us the lesson that we don't. I mean, I just talked to all this stuff about the political realities and what's happening inside of politics. But, you know, you also, when you look at President Trump, you have to look at a lot of things that are happening, you know, all throughout society and people feeling, you know, you have cities and communities with a country kind of hollowed out by 50 years of, you know, sort of globalization and these types of things. And you think that you can bring culture through politics, but often you learn the lesson that you can't. And I can tell you, like, I learned that

lesson in 2022 when I ran for Congress. You know, if you look at the numbers and you say you're going to run for the Democratic Party nomination for the first district of Illinois and you're pro-life, you know, that was a steep hill to climb. Now, I think at the beginning of our campaign, we had calculated that the decision on abortion was not going to come out until after the primary, but then it leaked in the winter. But so we had more of a chance than we ended up having at the beginning. But still, when I look back at it clear-eyed, that's one of those things where it's like, we're going to teach people to be pro-life

through this campaign. And many, many times politics teaches us, you know, no, that's not the case. And I think a lot of people came to 2020 or 2016 thinking Donald Trump could never be elected president of the United States. And, but reality will teach politics often. Unless. Yeah.

Yeah. That's interesting and way more sophisticated than I could have articulated. You know, as I look on kind of almost from a distance, yeah, Trump being a byproduct of kind of other cultural undercurrents, to me, it just makes a lot more sense. And for new listeners who haven't heard me talk about this, just to be clear, I mean, I think Donald Trump is clear evidence of the moral depravity of humanity. I mean, he's so deranged. He believes his own lies. He is, I mean, he's the epitome of the empire really, but that's a whole nother conversation. So if I, but in this day and age, if you don't do nothing, but just denounce somebody as, if you even try to explain how could he get elected and if your conclusion isn't well because you have 80 of the evangelical church they're all flaming racist they wear white hoods and you have a bunch of people that you know it's

like well it's a little more complicated than that too i think i mean you put up hillary as bill burr says you know you have a choice between this racist and the devil in 2016. Like, these are options, you know? Like, I mean, you have two faces of the empire. One's male, one's female. And both of them, I wouldn't trust to watch my kid for two seconds. But I wonder, like, the social movement, it does, it seems like there was this aversion against what some people perceived as an authoritarian left-wing culture with the sort of rise of political correctness. If you don't believe in same-sex marriage,

you're a bigot and a hate monger. You don't say this word, say this word and do this, that. And I think people got kind of frustrated and they wanted the bull in the china shop to just go and quote, drain the swamp or blow things up. Comb combined with a profound distrust for just politicians as a whole. They're all liars. They're all corrupt, you know, is the perception. And then you have, you know, Hillary saying if you vote for him, you're deplorable or like 50% of his, you know. So I think there was this just frustration among people who didn't tow the kind of far left-wing party line or cultural. No, they towed the cultural.

And then he was kind of a reaction against that. And they're like, yeah, but he says racist things. He talks about women that are really derogatory. Well, for a culture that's 60% is watching porn every night, I don't think they care about some comment, you know, that was caught, you know, it's like, if you put a hot mic up at any locker room or pastoral office, I mean, what are you going to find? So I think people roll their eyes, like whatever, he's going to go and he's going to, you know, say it like it is, you know, I'm not justifying, all I'm doing is trying to explain on a sociological level how somebody as deranged as he is could get elected. I don't think it's necessarily because every single person that voted for him is just a flaming racist and a bigot and a homophobe and all these things.

I think it's, certainly that's some of it, but I think it's more complex than that. And I think until the left realizes that, they're going to keep getting people like him elected, quite honestly. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are these opportunities, these times when, like I said, what's actually happening out in the world teaches people who work in elected politics all the time. I mean, most of the time people who work in elected politics think that they can bring a reality to the people. And one of the things I actually admire about American voters is that they are a whole heck of a lot more self-aware and and smart than a lot of people who work in electoral politics and government give them credit for

um you know and you can you can pull some things over but those those general sort of like something's over. But those general sort of like waves and that vibe in the culture and in society, people know what that is and people know what they're looking for. And just because you go out and tell them that they need something else is not going to make them forget what they're experiencing in their everyday life. So a lack of involvement, extensive involvement with kind of real people on the ground, is there's a disconnect between, at least we're talking more national politics at least. Yeah, I think so. And unfortunately, I think that a lot of that is bleeding into local politics more and more. local politics more and more. And it's why you see fewer and fewer people, I think, participating in our institutions and in voting and the whole electoral process, not because they don't know,

not because so much they don't care, but they just don't see it as a primary vehicle for creating change in their present reality. You know, I was talking to somebody very recently in the last week about this, you know, election that's setting up between what looks like now between two guys who nobody wants to be president. And, you know, it's a campaign that nobody wants to be president. But it's a campaign that nobody wants, everybody's going to get. And people are like, well, would you ever consider voting for Trump?

Because Trump is so bad, and he was this and he was that. And I ask the question that I always ask, and I asked this question even before Donald Trump was on the scene. How different, really, was your life under Joe Biden for the last four years than it was under Donald Trump for four years? Where does it actually, you know, impact your life? So much of our government is consumed with the realities experienced by the very, very wealthy and the very, very powerful. So much of that focus is shared between the two major political parties that our congressional districts

are gerrymandered such that vast, vast majority of them are safely in one party's control or the other. So most of these parts of our federal government right now are just interchangeable personalities, you know, but ultimately, most of it doesn't change. Like, it just stays the same. This episode is sponsored by Biblingo.

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And what I love most about the Bible recap is that it's focused on what each section of Scripture reveals to us about the person and work of God. So it doesn't fall into like human-centered moralism. It keeps the focus on what the Bible tells us about God. to focus on what the Bible tells us about God. In fact, a couple of my kids are actually going to be trying to read through the whole Bible this next year, and they're going to also be going through the Bible Recap alongside their yearly Bible reading. Tara Lee Cobble, the author of the Bible Recap, I mean, she's awesome. She's a relentless researcher when it comes to scripture and a super clear and engaging writer. And she's also the host of the super popular The Bible Recap podcast. Ryder. And she's also the host of the super popular The Bible Recap podcast. So yeah, I would invite you to go check out Theology in Raw episode 1067, where I had an awesome conversation with

Tara Lee Coble, and you can hear her heart for God and scripture. So I highly recommend buying The Bible Recap for yourself or for someone you know that's wanting to wrap their mind and heart around the storyline of scripture. Just go to thebiblerecap.com to find out more. That's thebiblerecap.com. So wait, this is getting into more of what I know you're passionate about, more local politics rather than national politics. So are you saying, because I've thought this, but I have nothing to back it up, but like that national, whoever's in office on a national level, it doesn't, it doesn't affect the life of the common person as much as maybe they would think, or how is that? Would that be what you're saying?

I would advance that for sure. Um, and this is, this again is not a reaction to, you know, the last four years, the last eight years. This is something I think I've held to be true for a long time. so much in our local politics, such that we think about who we're going to vote for, for mayor in the context of what they think and say about Donald Trump. And, you know, those things really make local politics weird. Local politics, I think, should be the place where people can really come together around concrete problems and make concrete solutions. Right. You know, about infrastructure projects and community safety, schools and all those types of things that people where people are actually living in that reality every day. Right. Regardless of who was president, people send their kids to school.

They send them to school every day, no matter who is the president. And most of the time what they study doesn't change based on who's the president. As a matter of fact, if somebody becomes president who changes things about education, if your kid's in third grade, it will never impact their third grade. It might impact their sophomore year of high school. That's just the nature of the bureaucracy and everything. So those local politics should be safe

from some of these more ideological fights. But more and more, they're just not. Why do you think it is that people, like there are people, and this is going to be on each side, that if, say, Trump gets elected, they're going to think that basically it's over. Democracy is over. Christian nationalists are going to reign in the White House. We're going to have January you know, January 6th, every single day, we're going to have, um, you know, a bunch of, um, weirdos in the Supreme court talking about Jewish space lasers. What I don't know, I'm mixing, mixing people here, whatever, but like, uh, there's, there's

that, you know, the, the, I would call it, you know, Trump derangement syndrome where there's just that, that is society is going to crumble if he gets elected. And then people on the other side would say the same thing. Biden gets elected. We're going to have post-birth abortions being legalized. We're going to have 13-year-old people being transitioned and whatever. The age for consent for transition is going to be lowered. We're going to have just – the economy is going to collapse.

I could keep going, but I'll stop. You know, so why do you think, do you think they're just absorbing too much kind of propaganda-based news that produce fear to garner your support? That would be my suggestion. I mean, when I go to these news outlets on both sides or even Twitter accounts or whatever,

I'm like, oh, wow, If this is what you're absorbing. Yeah. You could, I could see all people get radicalized and think the other side is just, you know, subhuman, whatever, but like, goodness, like let's turn these, turn it off for a second, you know, and talk to real people. But yeah, it's certainly, you know, that, that idea of media hygiene is one of the things that feeds that kind of thought process. We certainly, you know, we talked about the social media's role in all of this in terms of feeding just the, you know, the worst of us, you know, back to us. back to us. And then I think it also, though, has to do with the flow of money in our politics, because the more big money is allowed to flow into local politics, the more those national themes that those larger concentrated donor groups hesitate to say care about, but at least think about,

the more they flow into our local politics. And I think that's just so bad for us. Do you think it's necessary or important or unnecessary for a Christian slash churches to be involved in local politics? And I guess I want to acknowledge the different geographical context. I mean, I live in Boise, Idaho. That's going to be a little different, I think, than South Chicago where you're at, where people are less affected here by... Well, let me just stop there because I might say something super ignorant. I've been around enough to know the different social environments. it makes a bigger difference in some areas versus other areas. I think that's kind of my assumption, but yeah. Do you think it's vital that Christians get involved or do you think it's like

some should, but it's not necessary? Is this necessary for loving our neighbor is how it's often framed. Caring for the marginalized, to making sure people don't drop below, you know, drop through the cracks. Is this necessary expression of our Christian faith to be involved in local politics? I probably would stop short of saying that it is necessary. I do think that it presents an opportunity to pursue the great commandment to love our neighbors, the great requirement to do justice and love mercy, even for those who practice in this space, like I have to pursue the Great Commission. I've probably done some of my most effective discipleship in the context of the consulting firm that we ran for three years. So I think that it's an opportunity to do that. I would stop just short of saying that it's necessary,

but I do think it's often a very good opportunity to do those things. I always urge people to be aware of your context because different sort of church contexts, you know, I come from a black church background where the church is very much the center of, you know, a lot of things, you know, culture, economics, politics, it all kind of flows into churches. It was very natural. And that may not be the reality. Actually, I mean, I know it's not the reality in every, you know, sort of church context. The community context also has a lot to do with how much of an opportunity. In Chicago, there's so much of what happens in the city has to do with the decisions of people, especially people who are in local government. And so it's very hard for the churches here

to say that they're going to stand up for justice and be completely uninvolved in civics. And I guess, you know, talking a whole lot, but I also draw a little bit of a line between civic engagement and political engagement because they interact, but I don't think that they are exactly the same. And sometimes you can be civically involved and not so political. Unfortunately, you have a lot of people who are very political and not very civic. As a Christian, I think we've got to be thinking through all of those things, like how much politics am I going to be doing? How civically involved am I going to be? And your context is going to have a lot to do with, you know,

how much of that opportunity you're going to seize up for. That's really helpful. I love that distinction between civic and political. Do you think it's, and this, so is it too naive or incomplete or utopian to suggest like in whatever ways our political leaders we want to in whatever ways we want to like empower political leaders to care for the marginalized and poor what if the church stepped in did that like if the church was functioning the way it was designed do you think we would need to rely on political systems to love our neighbors?

And I would say, let me qualify my own question even. Like, obviously, if there's a blatant unjust law, I'm thinking like the civil rights movement or something like that, like 100%, like let's work to change unjust laws. And there's still plenty of those, you know, I don't know enough, but I mean, prison reform and, and fair housing and other things like that. Um, but beyond that, like I'm even thinking of the organization in Chicago together, together, Chicago, are you, do you know about, yeah, I mean, here's, you know, the whole issue of like gun violence in particular is, is a, is a huge problem. I mean, all around the country, but in South Chicago in particular, and here's a network of loads of Christian leaders that are saying, let's rather than vote the right person in office to have a certain gun, you know, gun policy or whatever, like that might be, that might not be bad,

but come on, like, like, this is just gonna be an ongoing kind of political debate. It's whatever, but we can get together and, and help, help address, you know, the issue from the roots, you know, um, working with single parent households and, and discipling kids and getting people off out of gangs and stuff. And I think they're doing, I mean, from what little I've seen, I'm like, this is incredible. Like they're, they're doing, they're being the church and doing what politicians say they're trying to do, but I think never will. Um, anyway, that's a, that's a long question,

but I'm just thinking it's a, it's a genuine question too. I'm not trying to, you know, but like think never will. Anyway, that's a long question, but I'm just thinking it's a genuine question too. I'm not trying to, you know, but like, if the church was actually being the church, which is a political entity, I think, would we even have much of a need for political leaders to step in? So, I mean, and this is probably

going to get back to that sort, I mean, that essential question of how much government needs to be involved is what sits at the sort of base of our party system in the, I guess, traditional sense, not today's partisanship. I kind of fall inside. It's interesting that you bring up Together Chicago. So Together Chicago actually grew in many ways out of something called the Chicago Peace Campaign that I helped organize at some point in the past. I don't want to get into why in what years.

at some point in the past. I don't want to get into lying with years. One of the ongoing conversations that happens with those of us who participate, because my church participates in a lot of the Together Chicago work. That pastor who I was telling you about at the beginning, who founded the church and our pastor,

is the vice president for church engagement at Together Chicago. Oh, right on. That's what he's doing in ministry today. So we very much participate. But one of the conversations that happens among those of us who are participating on Together Chicago's work is if we can ever scale this without engaging government, right? So I don't think that it's a particular gun policy in Chicago

that's going to be the solution. But there are solutions around police interactions, around engaging those folks who are at risk, who engages them, how they engage them, where they engage them. When I look at it, I do see Together Chicago as a meaningful program, an expression of what the church should be, which is salt and light. So that preservation in terms of the salt. reservation um in terms of the salt but in in my view my read of is that part of that being of light is has sort of been a source of revelation okay and so it's like we're figuring out stuff here like stuff that works and government if it were functioning well

could pick up some of those things and make them happen. And that's so that's what I'm I'm talking very much like a Democrat. I lose some of my fellow Chicago Democrats when I point out the fact that for whatever reason, when folks go pray with these gang involved youthvolved youth, they get on this path. And Together Chicago is seeing that a lot of these young people are getting on a different path. So we need to put this in policy. And why would we cut out the prayer park? It's working. And we're trying to get kids on a different path.

If prayer is working, then let's get the whole city praying. Not because we're trying to make a state religion, but because we got data that say when people go pray with this particular population, it's part of getting them out of a bad situation to a good one. And we want to see them get into a good situation. And so many times when you approach it like this, you face tension on both sides. Because I face tension here in Chicago from folks who are like, no, we don't need to depend on the government. We're just going to do it, the church.

I'm like, yeah, but the church is not going to scale this over, you know, 200, uh, you know, 2.8 million people in the city of Chicago. Like government's going to have to step in here. But then I turned around to government and I'm like, but we need to do it how they're doing it, right? Like you can't replace some of those essential parts and expect that it's going to be the same. I think there are probably contexts and places where the church can carry the load, and man, if we can, and every place that we can, I think we absolutely should. I maintain that there are areas that would be really hard for the church to scale to. Government, I think, is the institution that has that kind of scope and reach. But I think government is too often hesitant to pick up some of the activities that the church is engaged with that clearly works.

So I'm hearing you say it's not an either-or. it's what that clearly works. So I'm hearing you say it's not an either or. It'd be a false dichotomy to say, just be the church and could care less about government involvement and stuff. Now that's really helpful. Again, I love the emphasis on the local church, or sorry, well, local church, obviously,

but also the local political issues, for lack of better terms, and civic engagement. I do think, I don't know, this may be too cynical, but I do think sometimes that the loud national fights and stuff, it just, it does become kind of a distraction. I mean, it just, it just, I border on sadness and anger when anytime there's a shooting, it just gets so politicized so fast, you know, it's like all people care about is advocating for this law or that law or people waving the second amendment this. And then, I don't know, it's, it's like, gosh, all that just can be so distracting when in front of us,

right in front of us in our neighborhoods, there's, there's local issues you can get involved in. Um, Chris, I didn't prep you on this, but I, I, so one of my favorite podcasts you and Justin did, it was your kind of monologue in particular was on the problematic nature of the word woke. minutes on why you don't prefer this term because it's thrown around so much. And I have not been excited about it, but I couldn't always put my finger on it until I listened to your podcast. And I was like, oh my word, this is exactly how I was feeling. I understand when people use the term and I don't get so upset when people use the term. I just think, ah, is there a better adjacent phrase or word you can use to describe the very thing that's legitimate? I get so upset when people use the term. I just think, ah, is there a better adjacent phrase or word you can use to describe the very thing that's legitimate? one is that the word is, it's an actual phrase, a social, it's a movement word that was sort of co-opted, right? So it originally is a word that sort of grows out of a Black consciousness movement, right? And it is the

idea of, you know, waking up to the fact of, you know, sort of the Black experience in America, how that sort of shapes the way that we exist in the world today. And real wokeness is not just about what has happened to us, but it's what has happened to us, what has happened through us, what has happened around us, what has happened in us. And so it's this kind of Black consciousness raising that I think the word originally began to express in terms of being a movement word. Some of the folks, I think the word originally began to express in terms of being a movement word. Some of the folks, I think, who originally started to use the word would probably fall into what we would call a more socially conservative sort of framework, which we don't talk about it much. But this is the reality. This has been the reality, at least for a long time in the black community. Black community is more conservative on social issues generally than a lot of people think. And so you're sort of co-opting or you're not taking a word that didn't mean anything and started to use it in this way.

You're sort of co-opting a word that already had a specific movement used and you're reappropriating that. And so I already have a little bit of an issue with that. So, and then once you start to reappropriate it to just be code for everything that I don't like, it becomes problematic, right? Because now I don't have to actually debate an issue. I don't actually have to argue right or wrong on this point. I can just dismiss the idea as wokeness. And I think that that harms both sides of any argument, right? Because, you know, as much as somebody might dismiss, you know, certain issues of zwokeness, one of the issues that I care a lot about and have worked on in my life is protecting the life of the unborn. Not a very popular issue these days, The life of the unborn. Not a very popular issue these days. But I don't want people, if somebody supports abortion, I don't want somebody to have to actually make that argument.

And I think if you just dismiss it as wokeness, then it's easy, it's categorical, it is sort of doctrinaire in a way that's unhelpful, even if what you want to do is deconstruct the argument. When I'm dismissing it as wokeness, I don't have to make the argument against it, but I also don't have, I don't make you have to make an argument for it. Because now all you got to do is

either accept the woke branding, which you know, some people are happy to do, right? And then that becomes a badge of honor for stuff that people couldn't actually argue for. It was like, it's woke.

I'll just do it because it's woke. And the flip side. So I'm not a fan of the term. I don't think it's helping the discourse, which I think needs a lot of help. I think it's intellectually lazy. I think when people use it, I don't think they realize that maybe. I would say, okay, I like to say, okay, is there an equivalent on the other side? I think sometimes conspiracy theory is another one.

Two years ago, the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory. It gets you kicked off Twitter, and now it's like most people are like, yeah, it probably was leaked from the lab. I mean, it's just to dismiss something as conspiracy theory. It's like, okay, provide the evidence that this claim is untrue and deconstruct the evidence for this claim and supply superior evidence in favor, you know, do the work. And I think woke on the, usually the right to the left is kind of the same thing. And another thing I don't like is it does, is kind of the same thing. And another thing I don't like is it seems a signal to a right-wing crowd. And as Christians, I just want to further detach people from this hyper-partisan allegiance or hyper-right-left-wing allegiance. And the term woke, it just does that. It just stirs up

kind of strife. Yeah, I think it's all what you just described. It's actually all the same problem, right? It is this sort of easy side choosing that does not encourage, especially for those of us who are believers. I'm giving a talk later on today. to talk later on today. One of the things that I try to encourage Christians who are involved in politics is that Christianity encourages us to be contemplated and to practice reflection and to meditate and to think deeply. And anything that discourages that type of behavior is dangerous to our Christian ethic. I think that that holds true in politics. And while I don't like the word woke, I think that most of our discourse these days, political discourse, is those types of buzzwords, you know, wokeness and again, like words that used to mean something.

But you know, anything, wokeness and MAGA and conspiracy and you know, it doesn't actually mean anything. It's a word that exists to mean You know, it doesn't actually mean anything. It's a word that exists to mean your worst conception of what you can possibly assign to that word. I heard a couple of people say they find the word to be racist. Would you say it's racist? And I think it has to do with their first point they find the word woke yeah like when white people use it critically that they would say that's a that's you're you're being

racist because you're appropriating a term that originally meant something meaningful to the black community i can see where people are coming from with that uh i two things one i think that it would have to apply uh to white folks using it on the left and the right, because there are plenty of folks who take the term woke as a badge of honor and appropriate it still in a way that is not in that sort of essential mode of black conscious racism. So I think if you're going to call it racist from that perspective, I would just say make sure that you include white folks on the left in that same behavior.

Racist to me is also one of those words that, you know, as somebody who has worked a lot on racial justice and, you know, and issues around race, it's unfortunate that everything can so easily be racist these days. I would argue that, you know, somebody using the word woke in the way that I just argued it would have to be pretty well read to be proactively racist. Which they're probably not.

I think that, like I said, I've worked on racial justice a lot. And it's an important issue that needs to be worked on racial justice a lot. And it's an important issue that needs to be worked on continually. But it diminishes the value of that work when all of a sudden, everything that I don't like is racist. Yeah, I mean, if David Duke, you know, some of the lowest levels, lowest uses of most wide uses of racist, you know, if I'm a white person and I simply participate in or benefit from being a white person in society, then I too am a racist. I'm like, okay, is David Duke a racist? Yes. He's a racist. Am I a racist? Yes. You're a racist. Well, we need to, can we

have a different term for each other? I don't want to be like arm and arm with David Duke just because, you know, so, um, yeah. Or even white, even white supremacy can be used that way in my mind. I think, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I'm still kind of thinking through that one, but well, I think that all those things that you're raising are, is, are important. And I would say to somebody who is working on racial justice and who cares about racial justice, that is equally important to have those, uhations. Because if you're working on racial justice, you also don't want David Duke and, you know, the white kid who got into Duke to be the same problem. Like, how do you, you know, how do you actually work that out if it's all

the same problem? So I think that it's important to be able to delineate. Well, Chris, thank you so much for your time. This has been so helpful, man. I wish every time I had a question, I could just call you up, but that'd be about probably several phone calls a day. So I will not bother you. You have plenty of work to do, but this has been super helpful for me. Thanks for being on Theology in Raw.

I'm really looking forward to you speaking at the conference. I've enjoyed it. I look forward to being with you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.